Anyway, he brings up some excellent food for thought on how universities should to revisit how we think about openness.  Not only in the types of systems and software we employ, but in our academic materials.  He reminds us that the fundamental reason we are in higher education is to educate and share knowledge.  What difference does it make, really, if people can download our course materials?  Why shouldn’t they?  Because they haven’t yet paid for them?  Why is that important?  To get any kind of degree the will actually need to enroll, so I fail to see how that would affect the school’s bottom line.

MIT has for a number of years now offered most if not all of their course materials online for free.  Think of the savings to students in not needing to purchase books every semester.  What if the students did have access to all of the course work ahead of time, wouldn’t that just make it easier for them to complete the work and do better?  Perhaps they would get more out of the course if they were prepared and could be ready when the semester “clock is ticking?”

Here is the video clip of his presentation.  I’d love to hear what the university community thinks about this.

Cultural Agoraphobia: What Universities Need to Know About Our Bias Against Openness
In this presentation, Professor James Boyle will argue that we have a cognitive bias–he calls it cultural agoraphobia–that leads us to underestimate the potential of open networks, open culture and open productive processes. What is the evidence for such a bias?  What should a university do about it–from the library to the classroom to the archive? Using examples ranging from the development of the World Wide Web to Wikipedia and open source software, this talk will try and answer those questions.

Watch the webcast

Wait a minute, you say!

What’s a mind-mapping app?

Glad you asked =)

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

Via Wikipedia

Here’s an example of what a mind map looks like:

Mind Mapping with XMind

If you routinely work on projects with multiple pieces, or in groups working on a team project, mind maps might be a way for you to visualize your work more effectively. Since mind maps can be a collaborative effort, it can foster a sense of inclusion, too =)

Now, another thing that makes XMind so attractive (apart from the fact it’s free) is it’s a Java-based application that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines!

So, go download a copy of XMind to see if it can help you be more productive and creative- as a team, professionally or privately, for fun or profit.

If you’re already a mind map user here at WVU, why not let us know how it’s helped you?

—-

Here’s an addendum for those who use iPhones/iPod Touches, or who prefer a web-based mind-mapping solution:

MindMeister is a free (for the basic service) online mind mapper. MindMeister has some basic iPhone compatibility, too.

iBlueSky is a $7.99 iPhone/iPod Touch app that looks like it has more features than the less expensive MindMaker at $4.99

(XMind info orginally found via TUAW) (iBlueSky and MindMaker info originally found via The iTunes App Store)

How would I use a wiki in Higher Ed?

If you are wondering (as I was) about how wikis can be used in Higher Ed here are some suggestions from the University of Washington-Tacoma.  Their IT group compiled various examples of Wiki use in higher ed here: Examples of Wikis in Higher Education

Also, the University of Delaware has some helpful information here: Wikis in Higher Education (UD). They have an informative PDF on the topic.  In that report, they discuss typical uses for Wikis.

1.3  Typical Usage of Wikis (What Wikis Are Good For)

Wikis are used to support a large number of different activities. Here are some of the most common ways wikis are used.

• Brainstorming: When starting a specific project or a creative process, participants are invited to add items and thoughts on a wiki. They are also asked to link all these random thoughts and concept together in order to stimulate creativity.
• Group project: A wiki can act as a private intranet for a specific group project so all participants can communicate, share resources (including texts, videos, spreadsheets, links, etc.), and write a report or a book together.
• Meeting support: An agenda for a specific meeting is posted on a wiki and participants are invited to consult and edit it prior to a meeting. The wiki is edited during the meeting to include was discussed.  Participants can later use the wiki to post missing information or follow‐up items. This technique is also every useful for training, presentations, and birds of a feather sessions during conferences.
• Make lists: From a list of best restaurants in town to a glossary of terms used in a specific field of  expertise, a wiki is a great way to organize this kind of content. In the same spirit, wikis can also be used to build an online repository of relevant documents or FAQs.
• Collections of links: Wikis can be used for social bookmarking. They give to all participants the possibility to post, comment, group, and classify links of all nature or in a specific field of expertise.
• Writing a collective letter, position, statement, web content: 
  When writing something that is intended for an official legal instance, to clients, to upper management or to the general public, a wiki is an excellent tool to reach a consensus, define key ideas, and write down the content to be clear and non‐offensive.
• Building a group portfolio: Any organization can use a wiki to post past projects, testimonials from clients, history of the organization, etc. This kind of portfolio is a powerful marketing tool.

That’s Great.  Where I can set up my own wiki?

Want to start your own wiki?  Here are some free wiki resources to explore:

• Jottit
• PBWiki
• Wetpaint
• Wikispaces
• Zoho Wiki (part of Zoho Office)
  
• Writeboard
• Google Sites (not specifically a wiki, but can enable group editing)

You can also look into self-hosting a wiki on your own server.  There are a plethora of free, open source wikis like MediaWiki, TWiki, DokuWiki and more.  WikiMatrix is a great place to refer to for information on all of them.

More information:

• Mashable.com: 30+ Solutions to Start Your Own Wiki
• Mashable.com: The Wiki Toolbox: 30+ Wiki Tools and Resources
• Wiki How: How to Start a Wiki

Are you using a wiki?  How are you using it? Do you have any suggestions for other tools out there?

Studybulb is a “free online collaborative community for study materials.” The site is stil in beta, but asking students and educators to try it out and provide feedback.  Essentially the site lets you create flash cards on any topic.  A handy study tool!

Google Docs is something that has been out for a while now and if you haven’t used it, you should check it out. You can import your existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, or create new ones from scratch. Invite people to your documents and make changes together, at the same time. All you need is a Web browser. I also found out last week that they added a form creator to the spreadsheet portion that will let you create basic surveys.  Since it is a spreadsheet by default, all of your data is saved right there.

Ning lets you create your own social network.  Why would you want to create your own social network, you may ask?  Well, think about all of those group projects you’ve assigned or had to be a part of.  Creating a social network for any group with a common purpose or interest makes collaboration and communication a lot simpler.

Evernote is an online tool for saving information.  Basically anything you can access with a browser can be saved to your Evernote account.  You can also create notes and save them as well.  Evernote is particularly handy if you don’t want to bookmark a page or a website, hoping to remember why you saved it.  You can save the contents of the entire page or only a few words.  The best thing is, you can access Evernote from anywhere, so you never have to worry about which computer you are using or where the website was located.

Edublogs is a hosted blog platform that targets educators and students.  It it built on the WordPress Multiuser platform and allows educators to create and manage student blogs. They suggest the following uses for edublogs: Post materials and resources; Host online discussions; Create a class publication; Replace your newsletter; Get your students blogging; Share your lesson plans; Integrate multimedia of all descriptions; Organise, organise, organise; Get feedback; Create a fully functional website.

Twitter is something that really requires it’s own post, but I’ll mention it here nonetheless.  If you don’t know what Twitter is, don’t worry, but it is somewhat of a phenomenon. So at the very least find out more about it.  Twitter allows you to “microblog.”  Basically it allows you to post 140 character messages and anyone who “follows” you can read them.  There is a lot of potential here for blasting out messages to a group of people all at once.  It can also be really handy for getting feedback.  It also syncs up with other social media like Facebook and MySpace, to your blog.

Picnik is an online photo editor that can do basic photo editing with any digital photo.  It also syncs up with your Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket, etc. account.

Phonevite is an interesting combination of new and old technology.  It phones groups of people at the same time rather than emailing.  This is particularly nice if you have a last minute change and need to contact a bunch of people at once.

blist lets you create – you guessed it – Web lists (’b lists… get it??).  It is a simple concept (as most successful web apps are): easily create and share lists. It uses drag-and-drop to organize information.  You can make a personal to-do list or do something more complicated like building a sophisticated business database.

So what online tools are you using?  Have you tried any of these?  What did you think?

I am personally unlikely to waiver from my support of open source platforms and tools, but I have to admit that this makes I more likely that I’ll give CF a look.  Here’s the post from Campus Technology:

Adobe Makes ColdFusion 8 Free for Students, Educators
9/3/2008
By David Nagel

Adobe has made its ColdFusion 8 Web development platform free for educators and students. The offer is available for all public and private accredited K-12 schools and colleges and universities.

ColdFusion 8 for Education is a full version of Adobe’s development and server platform. This free edition is meant to be used only for instructional purposes and not in production environments.

According to Adobe, “Academic institutions are experiencing increasing demands for students to develop ColdFusion skills earlier in their education to meet the high workforce demand for rich Internet application developers. Through this free offering, faculty can now easily integrate ColdFusion into their curriculum and enable students to advance their Web application learning more quickly and easily.”

ColdFusion 8 for Education is available now. Registration and proof of eligibility for students, faculty, and staff are required. Eligibility includes accredited schools, colleges, and universities in the United States and its territories, academic administration centers and boards of education, research institutions recognized by the United States Department of Education, and some home schools. Further information about eligibility can be found here.

Multiple licenses (up to 30) can be requested through a single registration, and multiple registrations can be used to request more than 30 licenses. Installation support is provided free, but additional support (technical support or developer support) requires registration in a fee-based program. ColdFusion 8 for Education can be accessed here.

I thought this was a noteworthy, because while web meeting websites are out there, this one is open source.  You can sign up for free and use the hosted meetings feature for gatherings of up to three people or you can purchase a Pro account with more features.  The really interesting bit, however, is that since this is an open source application, it can actually be downloaded and hosted on its own with no restrictions other than what you place on it.

Here is what they say about themselves:

How is Dimdim unique?
Unique = Easy + Open + Free.
Dimdim is unique in 3 major ways. First, Dimdim is extremely easy to use. We freed Dimdim of complexity, gave it a very simple user interface, and designed it so the people you invite to your meeting do not have to install anything (even to broadcast audio or video!) A single click starts your meeting.

Next we made Dimdim truly open.
You can download our open source version, extend our product via its open APIs, and even choose hosted or onsite versions to suit your needs.

Finally we made Dimdim affordable. And by affordable we mean free. Our free version boasts a powerful feature set to allow anyone, anywhere to host meetings with up to 20 people.

We grow with you. Need more than 20 people in one room or multiple rooms? Our Professional version can scale to 100 people at a time (and costs less for an entire year than some other products cost for a single meeting!) Our Enterprise edition is limited only by the speed of your Internet connection and costs less than half what you used to pay your Ex-Web conferencing provider. Think unlimited meetings with unlimited attendees. Add it all up and no one offers what Dimdim does.

This changes things. We think that since Dimdim is simple, it “just works” with zero install, offers disruptive pricing, and is based on open source underpinnings, we are enabling the whole world to meet freely.
We believe that this changes things for the better and appeals to our mutual passion to improve the world. With Dimdim people and organizations around the world who could never afford (or figure out how) to get together can now meet freely.

Could this be a contender against something like Wimba or Adobe Acrobat Connect?  I don’t know, but it is worth knowing about regardless.  It may just come in handy if you need to put together a small quick meeting online.  Might make group projects for students easier!  Thoughts?

Last year, however, I decided to try using what is arguably the most widely used and popular blogging tool to manage my course content online.  I installed WordPress on my personal web hosting account (a relatively inexpensive account that I pay for with a web hosting company).  Installing WordPress is easy, but you don’t have to install it yourself to use it.  But, you don’t even have to use WordPress.  Utilizing a blog for a course is easy to manage and makes delivering content to your students super easy.

You might ask, why not use eCampus instead?  Well, you can, this is just another tool that you might be interested in using. The concept of blogging itself warrants exploration as it has many uses in the classroom.  In using a tool like WordPress, one can get a better feel for how that might work.

WordPress has three basic types of content: posts, pages, and comments.   Posts are best for news items or items that are timestamped.  Posts in WordPress are by default displayed on the main page of most WordPress themes.  Posts are added to the site’s RSS Feed and can be subscribed to.  [You can opt to have a page display as the main page, though.] Pages, on the other hand are best for content that is “timeless” and doesn’t need to be timestamped.  Pages are not part of the RSS feed by default.  Comments are usually tied to posts, but you can have comments on pages too.  Comments also generate an RSS feed.

Ok, so now that the technical explanation is our of the way….

I set up pages for the course syllabus, the class schedule, general project instructions, final project information, and contact information.   For each assignment, I set up posts with detailed instructions and the due date prominently displayed in the post title.  This included tests as well.  I also created a How-to section pertaining to each assignment.  Additionally if something came up during the semester that I needed to explain in more detail, I could post and have it displayed at the top of the page (at the beginning of the feed, if you will).  Now, the real beauty in WordPress is not the ease of use in which all of this can be set up – which (is pretty darn easy), but the ability to forward date (timestamp) the posts.  So I can, in essence, create the entire course at the beginning of the semester and specify on what date and at what time I want the post to appear on the website.  This is especially handy for tests, but it minimizes the risk that the students will visit the first week, completely overwhelmed with information, and not pay as much attention to new information as they need to as the semester goes on.

Once you are finished with the course, you can then go back and reuse the posts for the next semester by simply changing the dates and updating downloads like tests and the syllabus.  This is also a good time to refine any of the posts that may have been confusing to some of the students or you found prompted a bunch of questions.

One thing I have not done in the past is allowed comments.  I am considering allowing that this semester to make the site more collaborative.  Other ideas I am tossing around are:

1. Allowing the students access to blog with updates about their projects.  In my class each student selects an organization (real or fictional) and develops basic public relations materials for it (logo, letterhead, business card, advertisements, brochure, and a newsletter).
2. Adding screencasts about using the software.
3. Asking questions and asking the students to reply in the comments.  Typically I don’t have much time to have discussions in class because so much of it is about how to use the software to create their projects.

I know I am barely scratching the surface in what I can actually do with this platform and to enhance the student experience.  On the other hand I don’t want to complicate it too much and water down the primary objective of the course – to teach the students about desktop publishing in a public relations context.

Regardless, using a blog to manage the timing and delivery of information is a huge help for a busy person like myself.